Material footprint accounting: addressing its scientific limitations

Material footprints (MF) and the broader framework of Material Flow Accounting (MFA) have gained prominence as indicators of human pressure on the environment, particularly in policy discussions on resource efficiency and circular-economy strategies. While MF and MFA can be useful as a descriptive measure of industrial metabolism, this paper argues that they exhibit several fundamental scientific limitations that distinguish them from other widely used indicators of human demand such as carbon footprints, ecological footprints, or human appropriation of net primary productivity. These limitations arise primarily from the absence of a biophysically grounded aggregation principle and the lack of an intrinsic upper bound. As a result, material footprints are analytically weak and potentially misleading as a sustainability metric, even though they remain valuable as a throughput indicator. To address these limitations, this paper outlines strategies to reduce misuse and deploy material footprint accounting more effectively as a tool for sustainability transitions. • This paper examines five fundamental scientific limitations of Material Flow Accounting and its material footprint. • This lack of clarity […] makes inclusion choices partly arbitrary and therefore contestable. • Material footprints and MFAs lack an underlying aggregation theory. • Tracking tonnes of extraction from nature is too general. • [This] makes material footprints more constructive and less vulnerable to misuse.